The information gap

When something - a new law being passed, a natural or man-made catastrophe, an important recall of a commercial product - happens, we can expect our major news outlets to report on them, allowing us to be "in the know". Right? Unfortunately, this is the grand ol' US of A, and we're not so lucky.

Upon deciding to venture to New Orleans, I had the great fortune of stopping by my local Chase branch to sign my financial life away. Making conversation with my new financial mastermind, I alerted him to the fact, shocking as it may seem, that New Orleans is, two-and-a-half years after the storm, still in trouble, to put it gently. This story is not a unique one among my fellow volunteers. The fact remains that a large percentage of Americans do not realize that the people and the city of New Orleans are no where near to being back or rebuilt. This can be attributed to many factors, the most important of which (and which just so happens to be the focus of this here blog entry) being that the national /local news outlets - your CNNs, Fox News', USA Todays, the Daily News' - don't put a high priority on the truth as it exists in our fair lands. Rather than reporting on how f-ed up everything from the government, to the special interests, and even the plight of the middle-class home-owners, both here in New Orleans and nationwide, they feel that people (anonymous viewers to simply further ratings) should know about the latest black man wanted for a crime he didn't commit, or the cat who jumped through rings of fire, or how many times Britney Spears flashed her nether-regions this past weekend. You know, the truly life-changing, important stuff.

What we, in our media-driven country, need is a greater accountability of those which provide us with the information they decide is necessary. They have to stop deciding what we THINK we should know and start telling us what is ACTUALLY HAPPENING. The good, the bad, the kind of stuff that may make their advertisers/backers/supported candidates look bad. There needs to be some independence and objectivity. Heck, the world press has been a better disseminator of Common Ground/New Orleans news than our national press. And we're separated not just by state boundaries but by a huge freakin' ocean! It's time to bring the news, in a country founded on the premise of "by the people for the people", back to the people.

Oh to blog...

The question is not: ...to blog or not to blog. The question is: what to blog? The list is never-ending: puppies, sad clowns, whales, question marks, pies, Shirley Temple, rainbows, bows, hair, horses, Philly Cheese Steak Hot Pockets (hot pockets), sandals, sneezing, meowing, mowing, moving, shaking, extra-terrestrials, Chester Copperpot, Venus, the Arc de Triomphe. See? And that was just a fraction. Nay, an insignificant speck of dust in the vast universe of blog topics. Should they be profound? Should the be culturally or politically relevant? Can they be funny without being sarcastic or silly? Can they be interesting?

And this, my friends, is why it is both frustrating and liberating to host a blog. One minute your mind is wrapped and warped and twisted around a powerful movie you've just watched and the next your fingers, working in almost perfect harmony with your brain (oh that brain; always doin' stuff good), are transposing those thoughts into a digital journal. But this ain't no ordinary digital journal. This is one that the world can read. Fuck. Osama Bin Laden or Charles Barkley could be sitting in their boxers, in between You Tube videos, reading this out-loud to the respective harems. And how would I know? What would I even do about it if I knew? The point is, I can say whatever I want and there it is. Forever public record. Forever in the cultural landscape we have created and are continuing to create every second of every day.

But I have it easy. I made the decision, long long ago, that this space would be for random caricatures of life both in the Great New Orleans area and within this head of mine. There are those, however, who have decided to compile similarly-themed things and give them to the masses in the form of a single-subject blog. "Stuff White People Like" or "WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier", for example. Even "PostSecret", though it is really a continuous gallery exhibit, if you will, represented in blog form, is a single-subject blog. An entire world based around one idea, changed and altered ad nauseam, with an outcome of either golden-brown on the outside, soft and delicious in the middle, perfect or disaster. Those three example are of the former variety. I suppose those of the latter don't get the kind of recognition to be mentioned in MY blog.

And with the sheer staggering number of blogs out there, it's no wonder that so many get passed by without the slighted hint of interest from outside parties. Technorati, a search engine for blogs, estimated the number of blogs as of December 2007 at 112 million. Wow. Well now there are at least 113 million. And not all of those can say they've been commented on by Flushy McBucketpants. Boo-yah!

I'm vain, but you're Fain

It's a beautiful morning. Good tunes in the form of Assembly of Dust are coursing through the airwaves and my eardrums. The kids are out in full force; potting, watering, and regaling in the warmth of the April sun, much stronger here in the quasi-tropics than their yankee homeland of Massachusetts. And the afternoon? Well, that will be just as productive and entertaining, except our feet won't be planted on the Earth Mother in quite the same way. A big-ass canoe will be our chariot, and she will carry us around the Cypress Triangle and to the future home of Bull Rush, to be planted on Monday with the watchful eyes of PBS cameras upon us. Thats right, your favorite blogging, tree-planting tall guy will get his break on the silver screen in a PBS documentary series called e-squared Design. We'll be interviewed, filmed, and if you're one who isn't a fan of the whole "filming" thing, you'd say we will have our souls sucked out of our host bodies. I, on the other hand, am comfortable with the whole idea. Plus, I am vain as shit and can't wait to be famous.

Consistency

Those of you who know me certainly know that I like consistency in appearance. Symmetry, OCD, sameness. Call it what you will. I just like it that way. You know Monk? That show about the OCD detective who has to make sure everything is in order and arranged just the way he likes? I'm not certifiable like Monk is, but I likes what I like. So I apologize (mostly to myself) about the lack of pictures to accompany these past posts. But when technology doesn't agree with the decided-upon way of doing things, there's nothing that I can do about it. I assure you (me) though, pictures are forthcoming.

Parental patience

"Hi honey. Just checking in. Hoping all is well. Talk to you later."
"Hi honey. Just checking in again. Wondering how you are. Talk to you later"
"Hi honey. Please call us back. We're just wanting to talk to you and find out how everything is. Please do call us back. Talk to you later."

Within just a few days, increasingly angry and frustrated messages can pile up from one's parents when you are in a new place, a place that they don't know much about, a place that may frighten or intrigue them. Or, at least, they do on my phone. But what can be done when the son either doesn't have much to report or desire to be on the phone? The answer: just deal.

Parents are funny that way. They want to know. They want to know that their kin are well (and alive). They may want details, but more often then not, they just want to hear. Hear something. Hear a voice.

Not so much to ask for.

Back in green

So what does a tree-planting volunteer blog about when he is M.I.A. from said blog? Well, trees (or in this case, plants)!!!! Tuesday was a great day, minus a little flat tire ordeal. At the USDA Plant Material Center, I, along with the two other CG Wetlands team members, pulled about 1100 pieces of a grass called Spartina. The idea is that they (PMC) grow plants perfectly suited to these environmental conditions and then give them out to non-profits and nurseries who will then propogate and/or plant them on their own. It's a really important way for groups like our Wetlands Restoration program at Common Ground, which does not have a lot of throw-around cash, to make a difference in this cash-dominant world. It was a muddy and sweaty ordeal, but in the end, we were 1100 steps closer to restoring Louisiana's coastal wetlands...in a just and sustainable way, of course.